292 



Considerable wild rubber comes from Java and India, and 

 from the South Sea Islands, mainly from Ficus elastica, or the 

 red rubber of commerce. Also there is wild Castilloa from 

 Mexico and Central America. Guyale rubber comes from a 

 shrub growing mainly in Mexico. Contrary to the supposition 

 of many, though this is only a shrub three feet high, it is very 

 slow growing, most of that used at present to manufacture rub- 

 ber being twenty or thirty years old. From the first year, when 

 only six inches high, it flowers and seeds. Up to the third year 

 it contains no rubber at all, and from the third to the eighth 

 year the percentage of rubber is small and it is only fit for use 

 when eight years old. The quality is inferior. The available 

 supply will only last four or five years and then the supply will 

 be exhausted. It will therefore help to fill the supply until more 

 plantation rubber can take its place. 



II. FOREST PLANTED RUBBER. 



Rubber planted in the forest to supplant the wild trees and 

 vines of the forest. There is considerable of such planting going 

 on in Africa and there will probably be much more now that the 

 Ryan Syndicate has taken over Congo Free State Concession. 



III. plan-Tation rubber. 



Next comes plantation rubber, which can easily compete as 

 far as the cost of production goes, with the other two classes, and 

 with the increasing knowledge as to its preparation and the con- 

 sequent increase in the lasting power of the rubber, it is destined 

 eventually to crowd out the other two forms if a low price brings 

 them into a life and death competition. 



There are, as is well known, a number of different varieties 

 which are being cultivated in different parts of the world, being 

 mainly the Hevea or Para, the Ceara or Manihot Glaziovji, the 

 Castilloa, and the Ficus elastica or Rhambong. 



hevea braziliensis. 



Of these the Hevea Braziliensis is probably the most import- 

 ant. Its cultivation has been highly successful in Ceylon and 

 the Malay States and it has had far more thought expended 

 on it and* its culture has reached a far higher point than that of 



